Joel Ferry says he’ll help anyone apply for a state grant that gives money to farmers and ranchers for projects that conserve water.
But Ferry — executive director of Utah’s Department of Natural Resources — has put his own name on only two applications in the program’s history. Both applications sought grants for his cousin, according to records obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune through a public records request.
Ferry says his name wouldn’t have influenced whether or not his cousin’s Box Elder County farm received the more than $200,000 in grants it got from the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food.
The ranking criteria used to award the grants is “unbiased” and “black and white,” Ferry said. “An individual cannot influence that score.”
Critics say these successful applications that included a state official’s name on behalf of a family member raise questions about transparency and accountability in the selection process for the Agricultural Water Optimization Program. The program has received $276 million in state funds to date and distributed more than $150 million.
It provides grants to farmers and irrigation companies to help them pay for water-saving infrastructure, with the aim of getting more water to the drought-stricken Great Salt Lake and Colorado River over the long term. These grants can range from several thousand dollars to as much as $1 million.
The 6-year-old program has been the subject of criticism since its inception. A state audit found it did not have clear goals or sufficiently report data from its projects, making it difficult to prove its grants were actually saving water.
Ferry, of Box Elder County, said he has assisted “dozens and dozens” of people “because they asked me to help them.” He said he also does it “because I believe in this program and I see the benefit of the program,” he said.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Joel Ferry, Executive Director of the Department of Natural Resources talks about the former North Temple Landfill, on Friday, Jan 31, 2025.
“I’m trying to help the little guy,” Ferry continued. “If my name was plastered all over it and I got the money, yeah, that’s a problem. But that’s not the case.”
Zach Frankel, executive director of the environmental nonprofit Utah Rivers Council, said that the applications raise questions about Ferry’s compliance with the state’s ethics laws for public officials. Utah law prohibits public officials from using their position to secure “special privileges or exemptions” for themselves or others.
“He should not be doing anything that benefits his extended family,” Frankel said. “It may very well be that all he did was help with paperwork … but there’s simply no reason why another state employee couldn’t have helped complete paperwork.”
How the program works
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Bear River near Corinne on Friday, July 18, 2025.
The state established a committee in 2023 to set the criteria used for evaluating grant applications, UDAF spokesperson Caroline Hargraves said. Ferry, as the director of the Department of Natural Resources, appointed five of the nine members of that committee.
The questions used this year to rank requests touch on the type of proposed project, if the project is located in the Great Salt Lake watershed or the Colorado River Basin and the total project cost per acre.
Ferry said that he helps applicants because “farmers don’t have attorneys on staff or grant writers on staff to go and fill these things out for them, so they don’t know what to do.”
Ferry’s name appears on a 2023 grant application titled “Bar D” for his cousin, Ben Ferry, to replace the use of flood irrigation with sprinkler irrigation equipment on 120 acres of Box Elder County land planted with corn, wheat and alfalfa.
Flood irrigation can be inefficient in a few ways. It tends to lose water due to evaporation. It can also waste water by allowing it to overflow onto other areas or to run off crops, especially if the ground has some slope to it. Ben Ferry was awarded $156,000 from the state for the project, which he wrote in the application would improve wildlife habitat and wetland conditions, as well as allow “excess water” to run into the Bear River Bay of the Great Salt Lake.
The 2025 grant application titled “South Ditch,” for which Ben Ferry was awarded $49,500 from the state, was for leveling land on 25 acres in Box Elder County for more efficient irrigation.
Hargraves said Submittable, a grant management software program, automatically ranks the applications based on the criteria. From there, the committee reviews applications “in unique cases where program staff have specific concerns, such as an unusually high cost per acre or inclusion of atypical expenses like well construction, that may require further scrutiny,” she said.
That committee, Hargraves said, “does not review individual applications” and did not review the two applications Ferry’s name appeared on.
Committee member Burdette Barker — who was not appointed by Ferry — confirmed in an email that the scoring of applications is “done automatically by the submission platform software and UDAF staff.” Barker is an assistant professor at Utah State University and the state’s extension irrigation specialist.
The committee, he wrote, is “asked for input when something is unclear, marginal, etc. and to select the cutoff score for funding. The applicant names are redacted in the information that we see, which is usually just a summary of the application.”
The Utah Conservation Commission, a board that Ferry sits on, makes final award decisions for the program after the committee reviews them, said Hargraves. Ferry said he recused himself from the votes on his cousin’s applications.
The projects that win grant money, Ferry said, “are good projects that will conserve water, and they ranked it, and that’s what matters. It wasn’t as if the ranking numbers were changed because of my relationship there. The projects have to stand on their own.”
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox appointed Ferry to direct the state’s Department of Natural Resources in 2022. Robert Carroll, director of communications for Cox, said that while Ferry is responsible for selecting members of the program’s grant committee, “Joel had no role in selecting recipients and did not contact committee members about specific applications.”
“We welcome and expect our public servants to help Utahns access programs that protect our shared natural resources, so long as the process remains fair, transparent, and competitive,” Carroll continued. “In this case, it did.”
Is the program working?
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) A field of wheat in Corinne on Friday, July 18, 2025.
Ferry helped secure funding for the Agricultural Water Optimization Program when he served in the Utah House of Representatives representing District 1, which covers Box Elder County.
A 2023 legislative audit found that the program needed to implement better planning and monitoring to ensure state funds were spent as required. Auditors said it lacked specific goals and performance metrics that could demonstrate progress.
In response to the audit, UDAF developed a strategic plan for the program that was adopted in October of last year, Hargraves said.
The more than $150 million that has been committed supports nearly 700 different projects across the state, Hargraves said. She added that 241 projects have been completed since 2019, saving about 41,000 acre-feet of water each year.
The program, Hargraves said, “benefits Utah farmers and ranchers by funding projects that improve on-farm water efficiency, enhance long-term water availability, and support agricultural productivity. By helping producers modernize irrigation systems and adopt water-saving practices, the program also supports broader water conservation goals across the state.”
But Frankel is skeptical of the success the program claims.
Recent changes to Utah water law allow farmers to keep the water they conserve, or to sell it for a public benefit, like for the Great Salt Lake or municipalities. And even if grant-funded projects are located in the Great Salt Lake watershed or the Colorado River Basin, he said, that doesn’t guarantee that the saved water will end up in the respective body of water.
“What legislators have done,” Frankel added, “is they’ve taken advantage of the public’s ignorance” about how water savings work.
“If they want to save the lake, then the water needs to be delivered to the Great Salt Lake, and that needs to be part of the application process,” he said. “Show us you’re a good candidate for these funds by showing us that at least a portion of the water will make it to the lake.”
He also questions the selection committee’s limited review of the program’s applications. “What we’ve seen is a lack of understanding of where the biggest water conservation savings are to be had, and a failure to prioritize the funding therein,” he said.Hargraves said real-time metering is required on all grant-funded projects to determine water savings, and a program criteria sheet from UDAF says a department employee must inspect grant-funded projects when they are completed. She added the department also submitted grantee reports that were previously missing and has continued to report the program’s progress annually.
Still, the 2024 annual report released in November reflects issues with proving the program’s success.
The report says “it is impossible to know precisely how much and if water is being conserved” without monitoring a project for a full irrigation season.
Water that is diverted for irrigationfrom its original source — such as the Great Salt Lake, the Colorado River or their tributaries — may not necessarily all be used on crops. So just measuring a change in how much water is diverted doesn’t necessarily show a change in how much water is being used. The amount actually used in irrigation is called “depletion.” “A significant reduction in diversion is possible for the approved projects, with a negligible effect on depletion,” the annual report notes, citing a report from the Division of Water Resources.
It’s also possible that some projects “may lead to increased depletion,” the report points out, “and this can often be an expected result if there is an increase in production.”